Security Tool Sprawl Is Killing Efficiency – How to Consolidate

Most security teams don’t suffer from a lack of tools; they suffer from too many. Years of adding products to cover new threats have left many SOCs with stacks that are fragmented and hard to manage.

Day in the life: It’s 2 AM, and a senior analyst is three hours deep into a single login anomaly. They’ve pivoted across three different consoles, manually exported logs, and are painstakingly trying to reconcile timestamps. The final verdict? A false positive. This isn't a rare incident; it's a daily reality in security operations centers (SOCs) drowning in their own tools. In a consolidated stack, this same event would arrive as a single incident with context attached, resolved in minutes instead of hours.

Security tool consolidation is about restoring effectiveness, cutting redundancies and unifying data in fewer systems, giving SOCs clarity and speed.

What problems does security tool sprawl create?

Complexity that cripples SOCs

Security tool consolidation matters because SOCs are drowning in fragmented workflows.

• Each tool has its own console, alert format, and reporting style.
• Integration requires brittle connectors and constant engineering work.
• Analysts spend hours normalizing data manually across dashboards.
• It’s no surprise that 84% of organizations say their analysts end up re-investigating the same incident multiple times in a month because evidence isn’t shared across tools.
  
  

Noise that buries real threats

• Overlapping tools generate duplicate alerts with different formats, contexts, and severity scores.
• Analysts waste time investigating false tickets, while high-priority threats sit unnoticed in the queue.
• Each review takes time, and with thousands of alerts flowing in daily, the backlog is never cleared.
• 73% of security professionals admit to missing or ignoring serious alerts due to their high volume.
• Without a unified view, teams are left with blind spots that no single tool can close. Most SOCs fail to align assets, controls, and threats across these tools, creating visibility gaps that compound over time. Attackers can move undetected, despite heavy investment in tools.
  
  

Strain on the limited staff

• Analysts spend more time managing tools and investigating intrusions.
• Burnout and turnover increase, and teams end up losing institutional knowledge.
• With staff shortages across most security roles, SOC hiring is already a challenge.

Business impact

• Every new product adds licensing, vendor management, and integration costs, which drives up the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) without delivering proportional gains.
• Every minute spent on duplicate alerts directly increases Mean Time to Respond (MTTR), extending attacker dwell time and turning a minor incident into a potential breach. For the CISO, this isn't just an operational metric; it's a direct measure of business risk that gets reported to the board.
• CISOs struggle to show Return on Security Investment (ROSI) when budgets rise but outcomes stagnate.
  
  
  

How can CISOs identify redundant security tools?

Tool consolidation happens when leaders have clarity. Most organizations don’t actually know how many security products they’re running. Different teams adopt their own solutions, old licenses never get retired, and over time, tooling grows unevenly.

Here's a proven 3-step process that organizations can use to identify redundant tools:

1. Establish a current-state inventory

Build an exhaustive inventory of tools in use, including shadow IT and old licenses. Then classify each by function, such as endpoint, identity, cloud, network, or SaaS. This alone often reveals surprising overlaps.

One CISO described this approach at the October 2024 CISO roundtable: “Chronicle is used as a data lake; there’s no point in repeating what they do, so we focus on behavior analysis.”

2. Map tools to frameworks

Align each tool to a recognized model like MITRE ATT&CK or NIST CSF. This makes duplicated controls visible and reveals blind spots. Using a common framework also gives CISOs a defensible basis for deciding what to retire or keep.

3. Track usage and integration

Look at adoption metrics like login frequency, alerts investigated, and features enabled. Over half of surveyed CIOs admit that their security tools are not being fully utilized. If a tool isn’t fully utilized or lacks clean SIEM/SOAR integration, it’s a candidate for retirement.

Security tool consolidation process: Inventory → Map to Frameworks → Track Usage

What are the best practices for security tool consolidation?

Security tool consolidation works best when it’s tied to business priorities and backed by data.

• Start with business risk: Keep tools that protect regulated workloads or sensitive customer data, even if some overlap exists. Retire low-value, redundant products outside those domains.
• Use measurable criteria: Create a “consolidation scorecard.” Track metrics such as analyst time saved, false positives reduced, and MTTR improvements. Run pilots with a small analyst group to validate gains before rolling out.
• Manage team adoption: Analysts often cling to familiar tools. Involve them early in pilots, emphasize the reduction of repetitive work and position consolidation as a way to improve effectiveness and simplicity to build buy-in.
• Treat it as a culture change: Cutting tools is the easy part. The harder part is getting teams to stop working in silos and start relying on the same workflows. It requires shifting the culture so teams value consistency, shared visibility, and measurable outcomes.
  
  
  

How does Netenrich Adaptive MDR unify security operations?

Most CISOs understand the theory of consolidation but struggle with execution. Even when overlaps are obvious, retiring tools means something has to replace the lost coverage.

Netenrich Adaptive Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is designed to be that replacement layer. It pulls signals from across the environment, normalizes them into one view, and adds the people and automation needed to make the stack easier to run:

From dozens of consoles to a single source of truth

Netenrich Adaptive MDR collects telemetry from endpoints, cloud, networks, and SaaS layers into a single operational view. Instead of switching between dozens of consoles, analysts operate from one interface. Duplicate alerts are merged into a single incident with complete context.

“We pull in alerts and signals from different platforms, normalize the data, and create a comprehensive context for analysis.” – July 2023, CISO roundtable

Adaptive MDR framework showing key features like telemetry ingestion, data normalization, behavior detection, real-time correlation, dashboards, and 24/7 expert response.

Replacing alert overload with actionable intelligence

Detection is mapped to MITRE ATT&CK, allowing teams to see exactly which techniques are covered. Automating the known means that routing, detection, and triage are resolved at machine speed. AI-driven correlation reduces false positives and prioritizes incidents faster while automation handles enrichment and behavioral analysis. All of this leaves analysts free to focus on proactive hunts and strategic defense.

Closing the talent gap with always-on expertise

Adaptive MDR is backed by 24/7 SOC analysts. You gain access to advanced detection and response expertise without adding headcount. For CISOs, this combination of technology and service directly addresses the staff shortage challenge.

What efficiencies can consolidation deliver?

Consolidation lowers direct costs, speeds up alert investigations, and drives efficiency:

• Lower costs: Security tool consolidation reduces licensing and renewal spending. Training costs fall when staff need to master fewer products. The money saved can be redirected toward higher-value security initiatives.
• Faster, more consistent response: With alerts flowing into a unified workflow, incident response investigations move faster and duplication drops, while consistent playbooks mean every team operates with the same standards. Less manual stitching of alerts translates directly into quicker action.
• More effective teams: When alert noise drops, analysts can shift focus from maintenance to threat hunting and proactive defense. The work becomes more engaging, which improves morale and retention. CISOs also gain clearer proof of value, showing efficiency gains and risk reduction in terms that organization leaders can understand.
  
  

From Sprawl to Strength with Netenrich Adaptive MDR

Tool sprawl is not just an IT management problem; it's a security risk in itself. Every overlapping console and every duplicate alert steals analyst time from real incident response. For CISOs, the path forward is security tool consolidation that prioritizes clarity, integration, and efficiency.

Netenrich Adaptive MDR puts consolidation into action by pulling telemetry from endpoints, networks, cloud, and SaaS into a single view. It combines unified visibility, automated detection, and expert support to turn sprawl into a streamlined workflow. Organizations that consolidate today will not only cut costs but also build stronger, more resilient security operations.